Month: June 2017

I have been working on it for over a year and I really believe that it is an accurate portrayal of the disenfranchisement that Sanders and his supporters faced at the hands of the Democratic Party.

It’s a good read, full of the anger, sadness and euphoria that we all experienced as part of Sanders’ historic campaign.

This particular chapter explains the reasons why the Bernie Sanders movement was such a personal revolution for me. It’s intensely personal and I share aspects of myself that not even those closest to me are aware of.

I sincerely hope you find something that you can relate to in my ramblings.

After you finish reading the chapter, scroll down and there will be instructions on how you can obtain a copy of the book at no charge.

There is also an opportunity to be part of the team that gets the book to press.

I sincerely promise to do everything in my power to promote this book to anyone and everyone who may help further the truth about the travesty that occurred against our movement during the 2016 “Democratic” Primary.

Please feel free to share this post with anyone whom you think may be interested in this project.

Without further adieu, here’s the chapter.

Chapter 16 – Raging Against the Machine (Kuh-wit It Now!!!)

I was off and running again.

Damn I was fast!

The fact that I’m alive now is a testament to how fast I was then.

John Southwood’s goons gave chase and I kicked as hard as my ten year old legs could kick. And hell yeah they could kick. As I turned the corner I used my peripheral vision to see that the entire gang had given up chasing me, except for Kyle. Peripheral vision was important. There was always somebody coming after me back then and I needed to be able to see what was coming. And in this case the ability to see without turning my head may have shaved a half second off my sprint and that half second could have been the difference between making it home to relative safety or getting my face bashed in by Kyle Vandebrock.

Kyle was 15 and two feet taller than me. For everyone of Kyle’s strides, I had to take two. I was three blocks from my house. My brain started trying to do math to figure the odds, but I told it to shut up. Doing math could only slow me down. Kyle was closing fast, but not fast enough.

I made it to my front yard.

There’s some sort of kid rule that says that if you make it to your own yard then you are safe and bullies can no longer bother you. So I slowed up and began to walk leisurely towards my front door. If I came in running my mom or her boyfriend would have noticed me. It was never a good idea to be noticed in my house.

Kyle stopped at the edge of the yard and said between gasps

“Why are you running? I just wanted to talk to you?”

His tone was completely disarming. I remember thinking that he looked like a really nice guy standing there and for a moment I wondered why I had been running from him.

I walked to the edge of the yard and said

“What do you want to talk about?”

Kyle swung his lanky right arm towards me. I remember it seemed like it took forever to arrive. Perhaps I have added this part to the memory, but I recall seeing Kyle’s fist eclipsing the sun as it majestically hovered over the treeline behind him. The adult-me wants to tell Kyle to keep his punches compact and to remember to always keep his guard up. A huge sweeping roundhouse punch like this, in a street-fight, will get you punched directly in the face with a jab, followed by a right-cross. Kyle was leading with a hay-maker that traveled through several time zones to reach its destination.

Kyle’s fist landed squarely on my malnourished frame and took the wind completely out of me. As I fell to the ground, Kyle hovered above, blocking out the sun. I remember he looked reluctant, almost compassionate, like a man just doing his job, going through the motions, taking no joy in his role as Southwood’s henchman.

While I lay there writhing in pain, Kyle said

“And this is for making me chase you.” and then he brought his size 13 Converse All-Star crashing down on my ribs.

As Kyle walked away, I saw him meet up with Southwood and his gang. I saw him gesture to them that the job had been completed. High-fives were exchanged and cigarettes lit. Another hard day at the factory. Soon the sun would set, we’d all sleep and then we’d have to report to work again. Me with my job as whipping boy, they as the neighborhood bullies. My bruised ribs would buy me no sanctuary tomorrow. A new school-day meant we all hit the reset button.

You might be wondering what the impetus behind these daily beatings was. I can answer it simply by saying that my family was poor. Looking back, I realized that John Southwood and his gang were also poor. But they weren’t poor like we were poor. They could afford luxuries like cigarettes and beer. And their clothes seemed to fit okay, whereas mine were hand-me-downs from my cousins, who were younger than me.

Once a year my Aunt would drop off several trash bags full of clothes that her kids had outgrown and that would be my wardrobe for the next year.

My mother got angry at me for growing.

I would try to force myself into the trash-bag clothes, which were several sizes too small and my mother would see me and say something like

“If you didn’t grow so goddamned fast then your clothes would fit!!”

To my mother’s credit, she did everything she could to keep me from growing. We rarely had food in the house and when we did, eating it would usually lead to some sort of major screaming match, which more often than not lead to me getting knocked across the room.

I arrived early to school each morning to get the bowl of free corn-flakes that the school gave out to kids on the free lunch program. I didn’t realize at the time that showing up an hour before the first bell was a way to let every kid in the school know that I received free lunch. I didn’t even know what was going on. I just knew that we were poor and that the other kids hated me for that.

At lunch time there were two lines. Kids with money would go through a line where they could point to different foods they wanted. Those foods always looked so much better than the slop they would throw on our trays, which I would later learn was the exact same crap they were feeding the prisoners a few miles down the road.

There was a popular commercial at the time, for Life cereal, in which a small boy named Mikey was presented with a bowl of cereal. One of the kids would say “Mikey won’t eat it. He hates everything!” then Mikey would eat the Life cereal and the kids would scream out “He likes it!!” This somehow resulted in kids coming by and dumping their leftover food on my tray and saying

“Mikey will eat it! He eats everything!”

And everyone would laugh.

And I would eat it too, as long as it looked like they hadn’t put any trash in it. We never had dinner at our house and it was a long time between lunch and the free cereal the next morning, so I would eat as much as I could at lunch each day. The kids all got a huge kick out of watching the scrawny little poor kid eat the food they were going to throw in the trash. I guess there was something about that joke that I didn’t really understand. I never really got the punch-line on that one.

As you might expect, as an adult I developed a pretty strange eating disorder that really just amounted to me always finishing every last scrap that was on my plate, even when I was stuffed, as well as any leftover scraps on my children’s plates. I just couldn’t bear the thought of throwing food in the trash, after not having it for all those years. As you might also expect, this behavior lead me to gain a lot of weight.

But as an adult, I had the means to solve problems that were impossible to solve when I was a child.

I solved my eating disorder by getting dogs.

They get all the leftover food.

I go to the gym everyday.

But man I have some really fat dogs.

When I heard about this poor kid from Brooklyn who had spent his entire life fighting for equality, it struck a chord in me. I saw the pictures of him handcuffed and fighting against the police and I saw myself. I read the stories about him growing up in a tiny Brooklyn apartment and hearing his parents fighting over money and I related. I saw him standing on the Senate floor, still angry, yelling at the rich bastards who had kept him and his family down and something shifted in me.

This guy was just like me, but he was actually doing something about it.

Bernie Sanders woke me the fuck up and all that rage I had put on the shelf came flooding back with a vengeance. For the first time in my adult life I had a constructive outlet for my anger. I listened to every speech that Bernie had ever given and it put me in touch with something I had lost. Some of my friends said that they felt like I had joined a cult. I wondered how the hell they hadn’t joined it.

“There’s a revolution happening in America right now!!” I would tell them.

They thought I was crazy. And to be fair, I was. My well-meaning friends were probably the same kids who watched and did nothing while the rich kids dumped food on my lunch tray and laughed.

They couldn’t understand why I had such a strong reaction to this angry Senator from Vermont. They had never been truly poor a day in their lives.

They weren’t like Bernie.

They weren’t like me.

But I met a lot of people who were.

For every school cafeteria in America, there is a kid who sits alone, who doesn’t fit in, whose clothes don’t fit right. There are millions of us, but we never knew about each other before Sanders stood up. Alone, we are powerless, destined to be stomach-punched by the wealthy elite, destined to have leftover scraps heaped on our plates, while those in power laugh at the fact that we are so hungry that we must eat their waste.

We are the outcast misfits who started in the back of the line when the race began. We are brilliant and resourceful, because we’ve had to be. And when the rich kids call us “basement dwellers” we wear this title with pride. And when our friends think us crazy, we get new and better friends, because we are past the point of apologizing for our insanity and now accept fully that all truly amazing things have been accomplished by those that others dismissed as crazy.

Bernie Sanders stood up in the backyards of America and spoke to the poor and disenfranchised and every castaway, gypsy and vagabond stood up as one and raised their fists in solidarity. Soon there were so many of us that arenas could not hold us. While the rich kids grew weak and stringy from never having to fight, we grew stronger and more resourceful because fighting was all we ever did.

When someone says to me

“It’s too bad Bernie lost.”

I often say something like

“Bernie has already won. Millions of people are awake now. Bernie cannot lose, because what he stands for are a set of ideals. It is now our job to go forth and make sure those ideals come to fruition. This movement supersedes Sanders. It is the eternal battle of good versus evil, poor versus rich, The People vs The Oligarchy. This Revolution is just getting started.”

Then they look at me like I’m crazy. Because, in fact, that’s exactly what I am. But I am not alone. I have several million crazy friends.

And we are organized.

The rich kids are shaking in their $200 shoes.

THAT’S THE CHAPTER – I REALLY HOPE YOU ENJOYED IT!! THERE ARE MANY MORE EXCITING CHAPTERS IN THE FULL VERSION OF THE BOOK.

The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book My Bernie Journey – A Behind the Scenes Look at the 2016 Democratic Primary

The book will be released on August 28.

I have been working on it for over a year and I really believe that it is an accurate portrayal of the disenfranchisement that Sanders and his supporters faced at the hands of the Democratic Party.

It’s a good read, full of the anger, sadness and euphoria that we all experienced as part of Sanders’ historic campaign.

After you finish reading the chapter, scroll down and there will be instructions on how you can obtain a copy of the book at no charge.

There is also an opportunity to be part of the team that gets the book to press.

I sincerely promise to do everything in my power to promote this book to anyone and everyone who may help further the truth about the travesty that occurred against our movement during the 2016 “Democratic” Primary.

Please feel free to share this post with anyone whom you think may be interested in this project.

Without further ado, here’s the chapter.

No One Wanted to Talk About It

I’ve never been a conspiracy theorist.

This is not to say that there aren’t true conspiracy theories. As time passes and information becomes declassified we can look back through our country’s history and see that there are countless examples of our government lying to us. But I’ve always been a wait and see kind of guy. Credibility is incredibly important to me. I try to be careful what I say. If people don’t hold me as a credible source then they have no reason to trust my words and without that I’ve got nothing.

Having said all of that, there were definitely some serious shenanigans pulled by the Democratic Party in the 2016 primaries and ALL of it was carefully designed to ensure that Hillary Clinton became the Democratic nominee.

I have many good friends who became angry with Senator Sanders for not calling out the DNC for their blatant disregard of the Democratic process, but I disagree strongly with that assessment. Sanders would have sounded like a sore loser had he spoken out. The party’s corporate media arms would have crushed him.

It’s important to understand that Sanders was not welcome in the Democratic Party and the party had elaborate plans to invalidate him and his movement. In fact, some of the chicanery used against Sanders was actually designed to provoke him into speaking out, so that the Democratic Party could try to make him look like a paranoid old man. They would literally do underhanded things to Sanders and his supporters in hopes that our reaction could be used against us.

The Democratic Party was gaslighting the Sanders campaign and the media was waiting to pounce at every opportunity. Bernie was simply in a position where he could not speak out. Had Sanders taken the bait, the media would have torn him apart and Clinton would have said something like

“I find it sad that Senator Sanders doesn’t trust the American electoral process and that he clearly has some kind of disdain for the American voter.”

Bernie has been in government most of his life so he knows how the game works. He was, and still is, the uninvited guest at the dinner party. They are waiting for him to say or do something offensive, so that they can ask him to leave. But Bernie keeps smiling and complimenting the food while he tries to get us to run to the kitchen and change the recipe.

So when people say that Sanders should have called out the party for their obvious manipulation of the democratic process, what they are actually suggesting is that Bernie give up his seat at the table. There is technically nothing wrong with the table. It’s the other guests that are the problem.

We need better people at the table. And these guests are hard to move. They’ve grown fat gorging themselves at the corporate trough. To move them will take millions of people, standing together, pushing them from their thrones and into the gutter to be washed away like the corporate refuse that they are.

It’s not Bernie’s job to call them out on their malfeasance. It’s ours. If he loses his seat at the table, we all starve.

But make no mistake, there was a tremendous amount of electoral finagling on behalf of the Democratic Party during the 2016 Presidential primary.

Whether it was Bill Clinton showing up at polling places, walking through the crowd, shaking hands with people while they waited in line, in an attempt to sway their votes or the blatant rigging of the Democratic Election in Nevada by Roberta Gustave Lange, the Democratic Party was clearly working overtime to insure that Sanders and his supporters did not get a fair shake in the Democratic process.

In Nevada the convention was scheduled concurrently with the state college’s graduation day, meaning that many Sanders supporters, being of college age, had to choose between attending the convention or participating in their graduation ceremonies.

I am willing to concede that it is possible that this was just shoddy planning on the part of the Democrats in Nevada, but there were other things that occurred that make it nearly impossible for me to believe that this scheduling was an accident.

For example, knowing that Sanders supporters would be struggling to be inside the convention at the scheduled 10:00 am start time, due to graduation ceremonies, Gustave Lange made several changes to the rules at 9:30 AM, when she undoubtedly hoped the convention would be predominantly made up of Clinton supporters.

Lange was wrong.

Even thirty minutes before the convention actually began, Sanders delegates outnumbered Clinton delegates and voted down the rule changes. Lange changed the rules anyway and then proceeded to tally the number of total delegates for each candidate. When it was discovered that Sanders had won the convention by having over 1700 delegates present (so much for scheduling the convention on graduation day) then the DNC began to systematically eliminate Sanders delegates with no explanation given.

Once 64 Sanders delegates were disqualified, there was a recount and Clinton was declared the winner. The Nevada Democratic Convention was overwhelmingly in favor of Bernie Sanders, but when those disenfranchised by corruption tried to speak out, a wall of police came forth and the Sanders’ supporters were threatened with arrest if they did not disperse.

From behind the wall of police, Hillary Clinton’s friend and relative, Senator Barbara Boxer, attempted to provoke a violent response from the disenfranchised Sanders delegates by verbally taunting them and making an obscene gesture.

There was an internet rumor that Boxer flipped her middle finger at the Sanders delegates, but in actuality Boxer, a native of Brooklyn, raised her index finger in an “up yours” fashion. Which finger Boxer raised is wholly beside the point. The intention is absolutely the same. An elected official has no business rubbing salt in the wounds of the disenfranchised. No image more clearly defines the shattered relationship that the Democratic Party has with The People than the image of Boxer blatantly mocking the Sanders delegates from behind a wall of police. This single action wholeheartedly symbolizes the party’s entire “let them eat cake” attitude towards the American people.

As Boxer screamed from the stage for the Sanders delegates to shut up and accept that their voice was being stolen from them, one justifiably angry man raised a chair above his head for a moment and THIS was all the corporate media needed in order to spin their distraction story.

Finally the Sanders media blackout was at an end. Finally the media acknowledged the existence of millions of people who were fed up and were demanding that their government represent them.

But the corporate media was not talking about the impropriety of the Democrats. Instead they were talking about the man who raised the chair and then immediately set it back down. Roberta Lange and Barbara Boxer took to the airwaves saying that they feared for their lives. Sanders supporters were portrayed as being violent and deranged. Sanders himself was called upon to “speak to his followers” and once again the corporate media exposed themselves as being in bed with Hillary Clinton and the DNC.

Never mind that a “Democratic” convention was blatantly rigged and we had the video to prove it.

Never mind that hardworking delegates were stripped of their credentials without just cause.

Someone had raised a chair for half a second.

This was what Clinton’s corporate media backers had been waiting for.

Sadly, Nevada was not the only place where blatant electoral fraud was taking place. Close races in Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky showed large discrepancies between normally accurate exit polling and final vote counts.

Clinton barely squeezed out victories in all three states.

While I was in Iowa, I watched as Clinton paid staff showed up to caucus centers dressed in identical red uniforms to match that of the Nurses for Bernie volunteers with the sole intention of deceiving the Sanders’ voters, many of whom had never caucused before.

At one Iowa precinct, two Clinton volunteers told the Sanders’ caucusers that the building was over the fire safety limit and that they would have to go outside to have their votes counted. The rules of the caucus clearly stated that once caucus counts begin that you are not allowed to leave or your vote will be invalidated.

Across the country in New York, tens of thousands of Sanders’ supporters were literally pleading for their right to vote. These New Yorkers were denied this inalienable right, because they did not register as Democrats six months in advance of the primary and while this is not technically election fraud, it does point to the attitude that the Democratic Party has towards voters.

The message is and was loud and clear.

If you are not a member of our club, then you do not have a voice.

But there was actual election fraud in New York as well.

In Sanders’ childhood home of Brooklyn, New York, 122,454 registered voters had their voter eligibility stripped from them just days before the primary. The reason given for this unexpected purge was voter inactivity. These were voters who were registered, but had not voted since 2008 or earlier. As Sanders’ success was primarily based on a combination of first time voters and disenchanted voters returning to vote for a candidate after a latency period, it seems obvious that purging these voters hurt Sanders more than it hurt Clinton. Clinton was simply not the type of candidate that inspired voters to end their apathy and return to the fold. Sanders was.

When these Brooklynites showed up to vote for Senator Sanders a few days later, they found that they were no longer registered. When they attempted to register, they were informed that they were not allowed to participate in the primary, because they had not been registered as Democrats six months prior.

I can tell you, as a traveling volunteer, that I personally had access to canvassing and phone-banking information that informed me of whom each person I spoke with was planning to vote for. Obviously the Democratic Party had access to this same information. The systematic purging of over 100,000 voters days before a primary is a ridiculous assault on the intelligence and basic human rights of the American voter. It is a blatant and systematic assault on democracy itself.

Democrats are a very exclusive club. They can’t have just anyone walking in off the street and voting. These people might actually vote for someone that will change the system.

There are well manipulated controls instituted throughout our so-called Democracy that gently (and not so gently) herd the voters towards the desired corporate candidates. It is not to say that there is not some shred of Democracy left in America. To imply this would be too extreme. It is simply to say that there are controls in place at every level to insure that the candidates that have corporate backing also have the Democratic Party’s backing and any attempts to permeate this membrane will have to be extreme and consistent.

For those of you who read this and believe that there is no hope and therefore no reason to vote or take other civic actions, you are missing the point. The mere fact that we forced the man behind the curtain to show his face, ever so briefly, is progress. It wakes people up from the matrix and causes discontent. This discontent is our weapon against the oligarchical forces that control our government. Put simply, we have the numbers.

The solution isn’t apathy.

The solution is increased activity.

The solution is political revolution.

If you don’t know about the massive election fraud that took place in order to help Hillary Clinton and her campaign, then I just sound like a bitter and crazy Bernie-Bro, which is of course, the exact narrative that the corporate media continues to espouse to this very day.

It is easy to dismiss these claims of electoral manipulation as the rantings of a madman. But there is the simple fact that we literally have proof of nearly every single transgression. A cell phone video here, a leaked email there. It’s all out there for those who want to invest the time to learn the disgusting truth.

I hear myself.

I know what I sound like.

And in effect, I am actually being a conspiracy theorist, because I’m telling you that there was definitely and undeniably a MASSIVE conspiracy to insure that Hillary Clinton received the Democratic nomination.

The problem I have in retelling this sick, sad story isn’t in providing proof. It is in limiting myself in deciding which stories to tell, because there was simply so much electoral manipulation in the 2016 Democratic primary that in order to cover all of it would require several in depth tomes.

Absent from this chapter will be the closed polling stations in Arizona, that mysteriously corresponded with a sudden surge in voter registration, as a result of Sanders’ rapidly growing popularity.

I will not be able to give the time deserved to exit polling discrepancies that began in Massachusetts and then repeated in nearly every close race across the country where Clinton mysteriously prevailed.

Nor will I attempt to explain why the corporate media arms of the Democratic Party suddenly stopped conducting exit polling for the first time in thirty years when Sanders’ supporters began calling attention to said discrepancies.

I will not be able to adequately explain the crippling effect that corporate news outlets had on the Sanders campaign, by running super-delegate totals on their tickers, around the clock, months before the super-delegates even pledged, creating the illusion and narrative that Sanders was losing by a wide margin in their attempts to discourage people from going to the polls and making Sanders political revolution a reality.

I cannot elucidate the depths of corporate depravity required by the media monopoly that told voters that the California primary had already been won by Hillary Clinton the night before voting was to begin, in an attempt to insure that Sanders did not win the state by a landslide that would have secured him the number of delegates needed to insure the nomination. If this had occurred then Sanders would be the President of the United States right now and there was no way those in power were going to allow this to happen.

What I can do is fulfill the promise I made on page one of this book and share my personal story. For I was also a Bernie Sanders county and state delegate and I attended my state’s convention in Indiana.

Upon arrival Friday evening, I smiled and nodded my way into the opening night dinner. It was really my only option as I could not afford the ticket price.

Once inside I did my best to blend in among several hundred people dressed much nicer than myself. As women in flowing evening gowns took their seats next to men dressed in expensive suits, the lights began to dim and in quick succession prominent members of Indiana’s Democratic Party came to the microphone and talked about how wonderful it was to be a Democrat and what an amazing time it was to be alive to see the election of the “first woman President.”

I am not joking when I tell you that literally every person who came to the podium used the term “first woman President.”

There was only one problem with that;

Senator Bernie Sanders won the great state of Indiana.

We, The People, had worked hard and knocked on doors. We had stood in the rain and trudged through the snow. We had gone without things we needed to make our donations. And even though Indiana is one of the last states to hold its convention and even though we knew, by this point, that winning was a long-shot, this was still OUR convention.

We had won.

We were told a week before our primary that Nate Silver had gauged Hillary Clinton as a 99% lock to win our state and our response was to pack our meals so we could eat while canvassing. We stopped going back to the campaign center for new routes. During crunch time we would finish one route and text back for a new one. We called in friends from other states and they crashed on our floors so we could come from behind and win this. On voting day we drove around to polling stations to film the Clinton people who were stationed at the door trying to influence voters. We spoke with hostile Republicans who called us communists and got some of them to vote for Bernie Sanders. We were harassed by police and threatened by men with confederate flags. We did everything and then we did more and we won our state and I personally tweeted Nate Silver that evening and told him to “stick to sports predicting because if you haven’t noticed after Michigan and Indiana, there is a revolution happening in this country!”

We had won.

But none of the speakers mentioned that.

And then the speakers stopped and three giant movie screens, that I had failed to notice before, lit up with the face of Hillary Clinton and all three Hillary’s told me how grateful she was that her supporters came out to celebrate our pending victory against Donald Trump and the Republicans.

We had won.

Hillary forgot to mention that.

We had won.

But we were treated like losers.

The next morning, I arrived early to the convention, in hopes of encouraging my voters to support other national delegate contenders, that I felt were more deserving of the honor.

I showed up with my best attitude. I reminded myself repeatedly that I was not just representing myself, but that I was also representing Bernie Sanders. I tried to think how Bernie would act. I smiled and tried to shake hands with the Hillary delegates, but none of them seemed particularly interested in speaking with me, so I went inside to listen to the speakers from the Democratic Party.

Clinton super-delegate and my district’s Congressman, Andre Carson, took the podium and spoke for 20 minutes about the importance of being a Democrat and what an honor it was to see the “first woman President” make such a historic run.

He never mentioned Bernie.

Then Indiana Democratic governor candidate, John Gregg, took the microphone and spoke about how Democrats create jobs and how important it was to vote for Hillary Clinton so she could be come the “first woman President.”

John Gregg never mentioned Bernard Sanders or his delegates.

We were invisible.

The speakers were bumming me out so I decided to walk out to the hallway and recharge. As I did I noticed a lady with a tray full of gum. People were taking a piece and smiling at her and she was smiling back. That looked nice so I walked over, smiled and took a piece of gum.

“THIS gum is for HILLARY DELEGATES!!” she snarled at me.

I stood there thinking about how much I hated politics and wondered why I was wearing a damned tie and wondering why I had finally spent the money to get an actual adult haircut. I wondered why it mattered who chewed the gum or who didn’t. All they kept talking about inside was unity, but then when I tried to shake someone’s hand or eat a piece of gum then the unity was gone. Perhaps “unity” was just a code-word that meant Bernie Sanders delegates were supposed to sit down, shut up and fall in line.

I’m just some dude who spent his life screaming in punk bands. I am not accustomed to morose old slags glaring at me and telling me I don’t rank highly enough for free gum.

So I snapped.

“I’d rather my breath smell like DOGSHIT(!!!) than to chew Hillary Clinton gum!!!” I said tossing the gum back on the tray and walking away.

I took a seat in the Bernie delegate section next to a blind man, a dominatrix and my new friend who had kickass tattoos all over her face and neck.

Just me, my funky breath and my misfit friends trying to infect the not so Democratic Party.

THAT’S THE CHAPTER – I REALLY HOPED YOU ENJOYED IT!! THERE ARE MANY MORE EXCITING CHAPTERS IN THE FULL VERSION OF THE BOOK.

Yesterday being Father’s Day, I made a post on social media that simply said

“For all you single mothers out there, doing the work of two parents, I wish you a Happy Father’s Day!!”

Simple enough, right?

Of course it’s not simple.

At first my post was well-received. Women began to say how nice it was to feel appreciated for doing the work of two parents and the whole forum was kind of a nice little love-fest.

But then, as you might expect, the white males came in to tell everyone that “a woman can never be a father.” It was very important to these white males that they remind everyone that their gender is decided by the genitals they had at birth and therefore women could never be fathers and men could never be mothers.

I don’t so much care about their arguments. People are allowed to believe what they want to believe. What bothers me is that suddenly it seems that we are not allowed to express ANY opinion on ANY subject without white males reminding us that we are wrong in such a forceful way as to make everyone wonder why these white males are so invested in a topic that would seem trivial to any normal person.

But nothing is trivial to the white male.

A thousand year reign of global dominance is not enough for him. Now, as our nation and our planet takes baby steps towards equality, the white male is here to remind us, in every public forum, that they have a voice and that their voice should be recognized as important.

And before I get too worked up, I want to say that not ALL white males are opinionated ass-hats, but whenever you see someone on a soapbox telling everyone else how they should live their lives, what religion they are allowed to practice, what gender they are allowed to be, what they can do with their reproductive rights, what flowers they are allowed to inhale or who they are allowed to have consensual sex with, it is always an entitled, blowhard, self-important white male standing front and center sermonizing to the rest of us.

These white males, having never faced any of the struggles that others face, are somehow experts on what everyone else should do.

It’s a bloody miracle!!

How did this one group of people become an expert for all of us?

I’m not sure why this one group has become so much more important than all other people combined, but we would be wise to listen to the white male, because he is basically a giant, well-armed toddler. Instead of throwing himself on the ground and banging his fists, the modern white-male throws their temper tantrums with violence and pseudo-violence.

If you choose a religion that isn’t Christianity, the white male will be there to harass, beat and maybe even murder you.

If a woman has the audacity to dress in a way that the white male doesn’t approve of, he will be there to tell her how offensive her choice of attire is. Sure, the white male can walk around in camouflage pants and no shirt, showing off his C-cups, but if a woman dares to show the tiniest bit of cleavage there will be a white male there to tell her exactly how she should be dressing, while simultaneously hitting on her, of course.

White males seem to be everywhere, letting us all know their opinion on nearly every subject under the sun. If you are colorblind do not fret, you can do an auditory identification of this breed from a distance based on their booming voice and improper use of the word FACT.

White males often use the word FACT to mean MY OPINION WHICH NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO QUESTION. They seem to think that if they say their opinions loud enough and often enough then their opinions magically transform into FACTS. They confuse the glazed over look of their audience with compliance when in reality it is boredom.

Some of the white male’s favorite catch-phrases are

“FACTS are FACTS.”

“Those are just the FACTS.”

and

“I’m sorry if you don’t like FACTS, but I didn’t make the rules.”

But actually you did make the rules. Or at the very least, one of your ancestors did. And with all due respect, (which is the EXACT SAME AMOUNT OF RESPECT THAT EVERYONE ELSE IS ENTITLED TO!!!) we tried your rules and they worked out pretty great for YOU, but they kind of sucked for everyone else.

So maybe you can just sit your #AllLivesMatter ass down for just a minute and let women decide what to do with their own bodies and maybe keep your opinions off of them, as you literally have zero idea what it’s like to be female.

Perhaps you could STFU for a goddamned minute and allow people to worship as they see fit.

And perhaps you could actually READ that Constitution you’re always quoting, because when you do, you will find that it was written by some very intelligent white men, who understood that color and gender weren’t as important as every human being’s inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

So, in spite of it offending all the white male snowflakes out there, I want to take this opportunity to say thank you once again to all the single mom’s who raised children by themselves and did the work of both Mom and Dad.

Happy Mother AND Father’s Day to YOU every day of the year.

You deserve to be celebrated.

White males who don’t agree with my opinion on this matter, feel free to express your thoughts and feelings, but you’ll have to do it with your noses in the corner, because I’m putting you in timeout.

After that, I want you to head over to the chalkboard and write 100 times

Michael E Sparks is a white male who doesn’t have a clue as to how other people should worship, dress or manage their reproductive rights. If you appreciate his voice consider throwing him a buck or two by clicking HERE. Michael promises not to use the money to oppress anyone different than him.

THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. IT IS FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY. THE AUTHOR WANTS TO STRESS THAT HE BELIEVES IN NON-VIOLENT PASSIVE RESISTANCE. THE AUTHOR DOES NOT CONDONE VIOLENCE AGAINST GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS IN ANY WAY.

It all started at a baseball diamond.

Baseball had once been called America’s pastime. Before anger, hatred, poverty and desperation had consumed the lives of the populous, back in a simpler time, people gathered in fields to throw a horsehide covered ball, perchance to hit it with a wooden bat and run with wind in hair towards the promise land 360 feet away from where they began.

But times had changed.

It all started at a baseball diamond.

Where rich, corrupt government officials gathered to play the grand ol game, but were interrupted by man with a gun screaming about healthcare between shots.

A Congressman was shot and wounded and the assailant killed.

Everyone said the right things. Everyone publicly denounced the action as insanity. Everyone agreed that times were desperate, but that violence was not the answer.

But somehow this was different.

In living rooms across America normally peaceful people said things like

“I abhor violence, but when you take away people’s healthcare you technically are murdering them, so I see why the man was angry.”

Peace-loving leftists had begun saying things like

“It’s wrong to use violence, but the Congressman who was shot voted for mentally ill people to be able to buy firearms so…”

Then a shot rang out during a press conference.

A Senator was there speaking one moment, then a moment later a gruesome visage filled television screens as the man’s head was somehow severed in half. Reporters scrambled for safety, but a second shot never came.

News outlets announced that the Senator had been killed by a sniper. The city came to a grinding halt as police searched for an assassin they knew they would never find. Over the next several days the FBI brought in many people for questioning. All of them were military trained snipers.

The media was loving it.

Behind fake displays of sadness and compassion from TV anchors there was excitement. Everyone was watching as they said the most exciting words in all of journalism

“We want to warn you. The images you are about to see are very graphic and disturbing. Parents please have your children leave the room.”

But no one left the room.

People watched the man with the disappearing head with the same rubbernecking, macabre interest children show towards a bug trying to escape the piercing ray from their magnifying glass on a hot summer’s day. Everyone had a theory about who the shooter was. People talked about it on the Internet and around water coolers.

A week later everyone stopped talking about the Senator.

There was a new story.

Something more exciting.

Congressmen all over the country began to get sick all at the same time, seven of them in total. All seven were rushed to respective hospitals. Six died the first night. The seventh succumbed the following morning.

A group of nurses, calling themselves The Sisters of Mercy, took responsibility for the murders. They even explained how they had orchestrated the event. Each woman had went to visit their Congressmen and simply shook their hands. During the handshake each woman had brought their other hand over the top of their Congressman’s hand encompassing it and sliding a tiny needle into it.

Each man had felt a tiny prick, but ignored it and continued to lock eyes with his would-be assailant and pretended to listen to their concerns. A few hours later the Congressmen all fell ill. By the next day the coroners had all found the toxin and the by nightfall all seven women had been taken into custody.

They did not resist.

A viral video was released that explained their motives.

The Sisters of Mercy said that they were reluctant to kill, but that they had each watched far too many innocent people die while under their care, due to lack of affordable healthcare and that they wanted to make an example out of the men who had taken that healthcare away from those they had sworn to protect.

In the video, the group’s leader, Mary Ingram showed her father deteriorating towards death and dementia as she tearfully explained that she had lost her job when she had been caught stealing medicine to keep her father’s pain at bay.

In the video, all the women cried while they explained to their children that they were sorry. They all said that they knew they would be caught and that being caught was part of their plan to shed light on what they called “an epidemic of greed that was killing innocent people.”

But it was not the only video going viral.

The Internet became flooded with videos of people in Guy Fawkes’ masks, hiding behind VPNs who used voice changing software to announce to the world that more murders were coming and that more representatives would be made examples of unless certain conditions were met.

There were so many of these videos that it became impossible to distinguish real threats from fake ones. In Omaha, Nebraska a twelve year old was arrested on live TV for making one of the videos. In New York city a man who “mainly kept to himself” was captured (also on live TV) and incarcerated as well.

This pattern repeated all over the country. There were even arrests made overseas. But the videos kept on coming. All fit the same pattern. It was impossible to tell where the enemy was coming from, but no one was actually being attacked.

It had been ten days since the Sisters of Mercy killings and things were returning to normal.

But it was the Town Hall in Alabama where things really went south.

Most Congressional members had canceled their Town Halls in light of recent violence, but not Billy Tubbs. He wasn’t one to be “pushed around by a bunch of do-nothing liberals.”

Billy showed up at his Town Hall surrounded by armed police officers and announced to the room that he “was not afraid and would not be bullied.” The crowd was angry at the police presence and things became heated. Screaming lead to pushing and shoving, which lead to a young officer pointing his gun at the crowd. Which lead to the crowd storming the stage. Which then lead to shots being fired into the crowd.

Chaos ensued.

Tubbs escaped unharmed, but damage was done.

Several police officers were badly beaten and about forty members of the crowd sustained significant injuries, most from being trampled, a few from gunshot wounds.

There was one fatality.

Shayla Reid, a 19 year old political activist, had been struck in the chest with a bullet and died before ambulances arrived.

In the days following, cell phone footage of Shayla’s tragic death circulated and the nation was in mourning. Shayla struck a chord with people. She was everyone’s child.

News outlets showed childhood photos of Shayla around the clock, along with tearful interviews with her parents.

The collective consciousness of the nation was altered by Shayla’s death.

The insanity might have ended right there if not for a statement put out on social media by The President in which he said that Shayla’s death was “what happens when paid protesters show up and ruin it for everybody else.”

This rubbed salt in the country’s open wound.

Vigils for Shayla sprang up all over the country.

Shayla’s parents encouraged everyone to take one day off work and “stand in silence for Democracy and to honor Shayla’s memory.”

One day turned into two, which turned into three…

The nation’s productivity ceased.

Life would have probably returned to the normal after a week or two if it weren’t for the bomb.

The bomb changed everything.

(WRITER’S NOTE: THIS IS JUST AN IDEA I WAS TOYING AROUND WITH. THIS IS JUST THE FIRST CHAPTER. IF THERE WERE A HUGE DEMAND FOR IT, I MAY CONSIDER WRITING MORE. I JUST WANTED TO GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD AND INTO SOME TANGIBLE FORM. I KNOW I SAID IT AT THE BEGINNING, BUT I REALLY WANT TO STRESS THAT THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION AND NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY. VIOLENCE IS BAD MMMMKAY? DON’T KILL PEOPLE. YOUR MOTHER TAUGHT YOU BETTER THAN THAT.)

Michael E Sparks is a good ol boy from Indiana. He loves to write. If you want to give him more time to pursue his passion then you can be super-nice and drop him a dollar or two HERE. He GREATLY APPRECIATES those who believe in his work and take the time to read it.

I awoke this morning to news that a man took a gun to a baseball diamond and began shooting people.

But this was not your ordinary every day American spree shooting. This was not a white supremacist shooting up a black church or mosque. This wasn’t some moron shooting innocent people in a movie theater or a homophobe targeting young people in a nightclub.

This shooter was a liberal.

And to make matters more complex, he was not shooting innocent people.

He was shooting Republican Congressmen while shouting about healthcare.

While my knee-jerk reaction is to renounce this incident and while my heart certainly goes out to the brave police officers who risked their lives to subdue the shooter, I really have trouble feeling bad for the GOP Congressman, Steve Scalise, who is recovering nicely while receiving the best healthcare that our tax dollars can buy.

You see, Mr. Scalise and his colleagues believe that they deserve to have their gun shot wounds treated and that you and I should foot the bill. But when it comes to our healthcare, they feel radically different on the matter.

These bills cause real pain and suffering in the lives of real Americans. These bills cause the deaths of innocent people on a daily basis, not to mention that the continual outpouring of NRA propaganda, spewed forth by these so-called representatives, results in gun violence routinely directed at our nation’s most vulnerable citizens.

These Republicans are big on thoughts and prayers, but don’t seem to care about passing meaningful gun control legislation or protecting the rights of those gunshot victims to receive the same level of healthcare that Mr Scalise received today as he was carted off the field.

With all due respect Mr. Republican, your thoughts and prayers did nothing to help the victims of the Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando.

Your thoughts and prayers did nothing for Dylann Roof’s victims, who only wanted to participate in a peaceful Sunday morning church service.

Your thoughts and prayers did nothing for the little babies murdered at Sandy Hook.

Your thoughts and prayers are useless to us.

In fact, to be completely blunt about it, you can shove your thoughts and prayers right up your ass.

What Americans need are sensible gun control laws and Universal Healthcare. You instead choose to spew rhetoric designed to confuse The People while lining your pockets with our tax dollars and NRA lobbyist money.

So forgive me if I do not feel sorry for you, Mr. Scalise. I know, as a liberal, I am supposed to be above it all. But I have watched you and your cohorts dismantle my country and directly contribute to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and I have grown numb.

And now, The People have become so desperate, so disenfranchised, that ordinary citizens are finally desperate enough to begin taking desperate measures.

When we were suffering all you offered were thoughts and prayers, so that’s all I have for you in return.

We have been the victims of your inhumane policies for far too long.

All of our sympathy and good will has been used up burying our own friends and family.

We have none left over for our oppressors.

I am reminded of the immortal words of great Americans John F. Kennedy and Thomas Jefferson.

Kennedy said “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

While Jefferson said “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”

And we have been living under tyranny in this country for far too long.

When we watch our loved ones die by the hands of the very people who were sworn to protect us, there WILL BE RESENTMENT. While I stop short of condoning the actions of the gunman, I believe that many Americans are feeling the same desperation that he felt when he woke up this morning and decided to head out to the baseball diamond.

They are feeling scared and desperate.

Violence is certainly not the answer, but let us never forget that it is an option to be used when ALL OTHER options have been exhausted. We do not condone violence. We stand for peaceful, political revolution and we believe in exhausting all peaceful means to attain that revolution. But let us not forget that our founding fathers spoke of our DUTY to take up arms against a tyrannical government.

When you take away healthcare that WE PAID FOR WITH OUR TAX DOLLARS and innocent people die, that is tyranny.

When you continue to take millions from corporate lobbyists and lie to the very people that you are sworn to protect, that is tyranny.

Your ivory towers can only protect you for so long.

Your town halls should be an ample reminder that the citizens are fed up and on the verge of revolt.

You cannot run.

You cannot hide.

You’re going to have to do something radical if you want to quell the insurrection that is brewing in this country.

You’re going to have to actually represent your constituents for a change.

You’re going to have to actually do your fucking job.

Michael E Sparks is an Independent writer and political activist. If you believe in his words and his work you can drop him a dollar or two by clicking HERE. Your support buys Michael time to work on Progressive projects and is GREATLY appreciated.

I like those guys a lot. And they like me. I think I’m a novelty to them, the guy with the Mohawk and the Bernie Sanders tattoo.

They are always introducing me to their buddies with

“This is the guy I was tellin ya about.” and then they want me to show their friend my tattoo.

Usually their friends will whip out their cell phones, take a picture and say something like

“My kid will get a kick out of this.”

Then they always try to get me to discuss politics with their friend.

I think it’s their way of saying

“Hey look. I met a liberal that actually makes sense when it talks.”

I could see how some people would get offended by that, but I know that these guys are just like I am, in the sense that they live in an echo-chamber and the only time they get exposed to ideas from the other side is when they see sensationalized corporate “news” or some haughty bumper sticker that says something to the effect of “I’m right! You’re wrong and stupid!! So sit down and shut up, MORON!!!”

Because that’s the level of discourse that America has allowed itself to sink to.

We have become a culture where “cash me outside” is not only accepted, but rewarded.

We are led to believe lies by those who profit from our strife.

We are repeatedly told that those with differing views are here to take away our rights and freedoms.

Corporate media bombards our senses with nonstop messages of fear and entitlement. Our entire nation is gripped in an eternal panic attack, wondering where the next threat will come from.

I was told that these Republican guys were supposed to be my enemies.

But I talked with them and they seemed to have the same hopes and dreams that I have.

They’re good guys.

We talk.

We listen.

We learn from each other.

We refuse to let fascist lies divide us.

Today I was getting in my girlfriend’s car, after my workout, when one of the guys stopped me and asked in his Georgia twang

“Where’s the Bernie-mobile?!”

“Blew the transmission yesterday.” I volunteered.

“Gotta get her fixed.” he boomed “That’s more than just a vehicle. That’s a war machine. That thing’s been all over God’s beautiful United States spreading the gospel of Bernie Sanders. If it’s coming off the road then it needs to be in a museum. I think you oughtta get her fixed, Mike”

“I thought about it.” I told him “But it’s got 170,000 miles on it. I think it might be done.”

“Mike, I’m not talkin’ practicality here. I’m talkin’ from the heart. I’m about this close to takin’ up a collection. If I come to the gym and don’t see the Berniemobile, somethin’ just don’t seem right.”

Can I tell you that this man was being completely sincere?

Because he was.

Even though he believes pretty much the direct opposite of Bernie Sanders core Socialist values, he doesn’t hate me for standing up for them.

In fact, he respects my passion and I respect his.

We often end our short, entertaining discussions with him saying

“Man. Every time I think I can dismiss the Democrats as a whole, I talk to you and I feel like there may be hope for them yet.”

And me, with my stock reply

“I ain’t no goddamned Democrat.”

We both smile.

Recently one of the guys at the gym, who was born poor and now owns a huge construction company and is always talking about trickle-down economics and how important they are to America becoming dominant globally again, found out that I was considering changing gyms.

“What’s this I hear about you defecting?” he inquired.

“That new gym that opened charges half what they charge here and they have better equipment. It’s that simple. I like working out here, but I have to save money.”

“Mike, you’re missing the point. The reason why you pay twice as much here is because you are paying for all these programs for people who can’t afford them.”

He pointed at a group of kids playing basketball in the gym down a level from where we were standing.

“You save $20 a month and these kids lose their programs. Is that what you want?”

“Wow!” I said “You’re starting to sound like a Socialist!”

“Well, maybe you’re rubbing off on me.” he replied, smiling.

If this story has a moral, it is to get outside of your echo-chamber and disengage from corporate media.

They sell fear in a time when we need love more than ever.

Find people who see things differently than you and just listen to them.

Don’t try to change their minds.

Just listen and get curious.

Ask them questions and try your best to be nonjudgmental while listening to their answers and you will discover that even those people who have views that are radically dissimilar to yours are still fine people.

I know it’s scary, but there’s the possibility that you could even learn something.

You may also be given the epiphany that if you were this other person, who was born in the environment that they were born into and had received the same data that they had received over their lifetime, then you too would believe as they do.

That’s kind of a big juicy steak of a thought.

I’d advise chewing on it for a while before trying to swallow it.

My name is Michael E Sparks. If my work has value to you, you can throw a buck or two my way by clicking HERE. I will always write regardless, but donations allow me time to actually sit down to do it and that is the nicest thing anyone could ever do for me. I really appreciate your kindness.